Aesthetics through Natural Ingredients by Jayashree Chakravarty

I have always felt connected with nature and natural surroundings. Growing up in an open environment of Santiniketan, under blue sky, tall grasses, swaying trees, and beautiful landscape.

A visual artist from Kolkata who studied the paintings of Tagore. Jayashree Chakravarty was born in Khoai, Tripura in 1956. She graduated in Fine Arts from Viswa Bharati in the serenity of nature of Santiniketan, a school founded by Rabindranath Tagore and obtained her post-graduate diploma from the MS University of Baroda in Fine Arts.

Over the last three decades, Jayashree Chakravarty’s artworks have depicted the shrinking natural habitat and loss of water-bodies due to over-expansion and development of cities. Her artworks address the issue of environmental disruptions and changing ecosystems that have threatened human life. Spent her childhood in the openness and natural surroundings by tall grass, trees, snails, snakes, and foxes; most of her artworks illustrate how humans are invading spaces and destroying natural habitat.

Jayashree Chakravarty collects dry leaves, branches, roots, twigs, seedpods, and medical herbs, from parks, and streets. Her paintings have a mixture of natural ingredients, tea and coffee stains.

“My work is drawn from everyday observations. I would collect twigs, leaves, and seed pods fallen on the ground. I’ve also used a lot of medicinal herbs in my work,” Chakravarty says.

The artist’s long-standing connection with nature including her self-absorption in the flora and fauna in her immediate environment. Over the last

three decades or more, Jayashree Chakravarty’s art practice has addressed the exigent situation of shrinking natural habitat and water bodies in ever-expanding Indian cities. Jayashree through her works reminds us that the earth is continuously being pushed towards a precarious edge, where the threat of daily damage has taken on precipitous dimensions. Through poetic evocations, she weaves into her personal vision, the need for environmental balance and resurrection. Nature continues to be the subject as well as the substance of Jayashree’s art. Her works draw sustenance from the organic materials she puts to use, collecting dry leaves and dry flowers, twigs and delicate branches, roots and medicinal seeds, and now, crushed eggshells as well, weaving and mending, as if the ruptured fabric of life.

You talk about your influence from Rabindranath Tagore. Who do you like more Tagore a poet or Tagore a painter?

Tagore is an inspiration for me and not an influence. Influence for me is you are influenced by someone’s ideas, thoughts, their ideologies which is not the case. The poetry and stories of Tagore, I had studied in school but his love for nature is the most inspiring. In Santiniketan, where I did my graduation, it followed the open classroom system. Classes would be out in the open air where you could see the beautiful sky, swaying trees, birds chirping and ideas would pop in while sketching or painting. The kind of openness and freedom would inspire you to fly high just like Tagore’s thinking and this inspired me and I too became close with nature. I love Tagore’s paintings, they are adorably beautiful and I enjoy the literature of Rabindranath. There is so much to learn from his work in different stages of our life. He is truly an inspirational personality.

Your concern about Salt-lake city marshland in general about our deteriorating natural habitat has always been seen. Do you believe we will see the light of the considerable change in the near future? Or you are cynical about the condition?

When my father built the house there and when we came to stay there, initially I never realized that this marshland was changing into a concrete

region. As a child, I would come here and enjoy the nature and forest area of Salt-lake. It was full of natural beauty with a lot of grasses and wild animals like foxes and snakes but with time now the marshland has turned into a concrete jungle. Change always needs a lot of discipline and planning but when it comes to nature it shouldn’t be structured. There were a lot of water bodies here and now only a few are left. The park built here is so structured and covered with an iron fence that it feels artificial rather than being natural. Big trees are cut-off, there is a play area, yoga space, and this is all man-made. I hope in the future the change will be for the better and people will understand the importance of nature and will not chop off trees. With the support of everyone, we will be able to save nature and have a pollution-free environment and nature all around us.

Your artwork with black dense network-forms is so reverberating with energy. One can almost lose oneself in trying to unearth the reality behind it. How do you define your aesthetics?

You mentioned black dense but there is no black color or blackness used in my work in particular. I use varied materials, vegetations, and mix different stains and so the blackness comes from there. I use tea leaves, tea and coffee stains, and coffee beans and mix it with black color and so it might look as black to you. My installation work is very process-oriented and it takes me more than 1 or 1 ½ year to complete it.

The initial idea is very basic and different, but as the process starts and I emerge myself in it, the ideas keep on changing, and when I am done the final product is very different from my initial thought process or ideas. For me, Aesthetic means balance. I cannot define my aesthetic, but the process that goes into it can be explained. I have a habit of collecting different vegetation, especially during monsoon I collect leaves, twigs, seedpods, and use them in my artwork. Cotton fabrics, parasite roots, dry leaf, tea leaf, and many-many layers of paper are pasted. There are at least 20 layers of papers used.

During the process, I see my work in bits and pieces, it is during installation when I see my work together as a whole and so it is difficult for me to define aesthetics.

While reading about your work, and observing your artworks I was swayed by the variety of materials you use? Tea, tobacco, dust, and everything that a man can think of? Could you retrospect a bit and tell us when did you switch from the conventional mediums or you had already begun experimenting during your college? And has it been difficult to preserve or conserve them in the totality of their existence being an artwork?

Though I have collected tobacco leaves but never used it in any of my artworks I have used various materials in my artworks. Speaking about the conventional medium, from 1991 I switched from conventional work, I have started using this kind of paperwork from 1991.

Before that, I used to create the paper just like how the Tempera process was. You use cotton fabrics and silk and then paste them on paper. I had studied Tempera painting and its process where you use cotton fabrics, silk, and paste it on brown paper, and sometimes only silk is used. Different paper-like delicate Nepalese paper, yellow color, blues, Indian red, orange color, lemon yellow, and occur yellow are used.

I remember in 1997, I used grass and zinc in my artwork. It remains the same way now it was when I created it. The way I create my artwork, the process is very long, time-consuming, and a lot of energy goes into creating my artwork; I know it can be conserved and it can stay longer but after my installations, it depends on them how they preserve my artwork.

“Chakravarty’s installations are constructed with cotton fabric, dry leaves, twigs, and treated with tea and coffee stains, synthetic glue, Lepcha paper or brown paper and embroidered with beads and sequins that reflect the imbalance in nature.”

Could you share your grand experience at Musée National Des Arts Asiatiques Guimet, Paris, an exhibition with our readers?

The idea was to create a jungle and do something with insects. I went to Paris in 2016 for my show and after my Paris visit I got a clear idea and started working on it. This took my whole year as I had to work meticulously and the process was very laborious. Creativity and innovation takes time but the ultimate result is satisfactory.

The way my installation was put up, the lighting was very apt and the creature was lit properly and everything was done so perfectly that the whole installation looked very beautiful. I had created a tunnel where we asked people to beam their mobile flashlights as it was dark inside. They enter from one side and exit from the other side. The artwork can be looked through various perspectives and the response of people was overwhelming and the whole thing was done very beautifully.